Laplace sat down over a large pink cushion while glancing at the scene through an orb projecting what was happening to him, on his lanky hands, there was a huge bag of caramel-covered popcorn.
"Fufu, look at them struggle!" The clown laughed, devouring the crunchy snacks. "This is way more entertaining than just fighting them! I'll slowly chip away your strength until you're so weak even I can kill you with a flick of my fingers…"
The jester smiled devilishly, his eyes glowing bright red with excitement…
Meanwhile, inside the monster-filled room.
As Lily crushed a dozen toys to death with her powerful pickaxe and her crystal magic spell, one of the most resilient toys started overflowing with a red aura of anger.
"Grrgg! You bastard!" The black teddy bear leaped towards Lily, shattering her crystal spears with ease as it charged towards her, and then kicking her in the stomach.
"Ungh?!" Lily cried, feeling that the small toy was most likely a D Rank! "T-There's a D Rank here!"
Lily held her ground as everyone else put their eyes on the black teddy bear, while Mark, Rita, and Elayne used their magic to constantly kill the surrounding toys coming from them, they left what they were doing and ganged on the black teddy bear!
No bigger than a meter of height, the plushie had the strength of a Hollow Legion all on his own! And if there were more of these, things would get even more complicated.
"Kill it!" Elayne roared, as she summoned several arrows of light and fired them at the teddy bear. "{Spirit Light Arrows}!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
"Gryyeeeh! You heartless monsters, trying to kill a humble teddy bear!" The teddy bear evaded the arrows swiftly, only for shadow tentacles to emerge from beneath and tightly holding him in place. "Ugh?!"
"Burn." Mark's blazing knife unleashed four slashes of dragon flames, hitting the teddy bear directly!
CLASH! CLASH! CLASH! CLASH! BOOOM!
Its loud shriek echoed across the chambers as the teddy bear exploded into ashes, leaving behind a tiny magic crystal, no bigger than a thumb.
"It's gone!" Said Elayne.
"There's more coming!" Rita cried, defending with her shadow barriers and her bullets against several wooden toys resembling horses and soldiers mounting them.
"March forward, my soldiers!" The bigger of all the soldiers roared, raising a sharp needle-like spear, and leading his army of over twenty wooden knights and horses.
"RAAAAAH!" The little army roared, surrounding Rita, and attacking her from all sides.
Their big needle-shaped spears started piercing her skin as Rita, who didn't had that good of a defense, screamed in pain.
"Ouch! Ouch! You damn bitches!" Rita cried, imbuing her body with shadows as she activated her clothes' skills, covered by blue dragon scales, which helped her tank some damage, as she started blasting the soldiers with her gun.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Die, you giant demon monsters!" The wooden soldier leaped towards Rita, using the weight of the horse to push her down as her gun ended flying away when his spear pierced her hand!
"ARGH!" Rita screamed. "Fucking toy!"
Elayne appeared right behind the toy, swinging her shovel with all her strength as her Mana flowed into it, alongside the power of light.
"{Holy Light Spirit Smite}!!!"
The Wooden Knight Commander was shattered into pieces by Elayne's strongest spell and weapon technique so far, the huge explosion of spiritual light blasted the toy to smithereens, only leaving a pile of wooden pieces and a shattered magic crystal behind.
"Be careful!" Elayne cried, quickly healing Rita, and giving her the gun back. "Stay behind me!"
"O-Okay! Fucking hell! I didn't knew a damn toy would almost kill me!" Rita roared angrily. "I'm getting super pissed off! Die you little shits!"
Rita started using her Super Bullet Time, accelerating her movement speed as she rapidly blasted into pieces dozens of toys every second, consuming her Mana but quickly getting rid of a good chunk.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
"We can't lose here; this is nothing compared to fighting that Fafnir!" Elayne roared, smithing the toys with her shovel, shaped into a hammer of light.
"It's a good thing that these toys are flammable!" Mark roared, swinging his knife around as four slashing blows were unleashed with each swing, slicing apart, and burning countless toys. At the same time as he spread the dragon flames, creating a Dragon Fire Snake Spirit to make a ring of fire, constantly burning the toys that were summoned.
"I'll crush them with stone walls!" Lily roared, crushing the toys with huge walls of stone. Sometimes which she even used to block their summoning circles altogether.
"There's a D Rank there!"
"A D Rank Ball is coming from there!"
"Kill the D Rank Knight that showed up again!"
"Two D Rank Teddy Bears to the left!"
In just a couple of minutes, through combined efforts and great cooperation, the group of four ended with the entire room completely empty, all monsters killed, and mountains of tiny magic crystals left.
They weren't as good as the big ones, but when they were hundreds, they eventually became a good source to farm them. Elayne knew that Laplace might get angry if they power-up midway through though, so she let her friends refill their Mana with them before saving them, without wanting to look suspicious.
"Laplace! We're done! Move to the next trial!" Elayne said. "You promised me… By the rules!"
"T-Tch…" Laplace gritted his sharp teeth, throwing away the popcorn bag as a door opened in the room, which led Elayne and her party into the next trial.
It felt like although he wanted to violate the rules, those were things he had said according to them, binding himself to his own words which he now regretted.
"Fine… You win, bastards." He sighed, appearing while floating in midair.
Elayne and her group were quickly brought to another place within the castle… A large, expansive area filled with all sorts of traps, and huge teddy bear monsters as big as four meters of height roaming around.
"Welcome to the second challenge! Hehehe… The Hall of Torture!"